


three makes a chord

by axilet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel & Vessel Interactions, Episode: s07e01 Meet the New Boss, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Happy Ending (kind of), Novak Feels, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4821104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axilet/pseuds/axilet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy and Castiel climb out of the lake, and they go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three makes a chord

**Author's Note:**

> apologies in advance for my shameless self-indulgence.

You claw yourself free from your grave with splintered fingers and flee in shame and horror. It’s an unknowable time before the madness finally lifts and deposits you in the dim streets of a nameless city. When you breathe in out of habit you can hear the lake gurgle wetly in your lungs and elsewhere. Your skin is cold as ice and the lamplight ( _burns_ ) throws the warped shape of your shadow against a nearby wall like an ill augury.  

You were dead. You _should_ be dead, when flesh and bone cracked apart like dry leaves as the tumorous filth bubbled forth from the cavernous spaces riddled through your body; leaving you weak, hollowed out, a broken vessel. When the water rushed in to fill the emptiness the Leviathan left behind, it was almost a relief.

But then you stood and fought against the current, shoes sinking into the soft mud until you found a place to climb. The desire for life is faint but it is not quenched, a candle flame pointing unerringly where the whispering wind in you blows. It is said that everyone dies with regrets, though you can’t imagine who else could have screwed up as epically as you did. Something in you, something stubborn and selfish, says, _I will not die yet. Not like this._

And because you aren't the type to leave your decisions hanging, forlorn in the ether, you continue what you have started.

It's slow, in starts and fits, this last journey you will ever make. You will travel only under cover of darkness; something in you cringes at the thought of being seen and exposed. A memory comes—a boy, turning over a rock and seeing the blind things, the crawling things underneath scurry from the sun. The confines of your skull _itch_ with the flickering sensation of pale spider legs no thicker than an eyelash.

To find Purgatory you took apart its unlucky denizen, lit a beacon from her screams, drained her blood for a scent and assembled a bridge from the arch of her bones; all so that Purgatory could find _you._ It still knows where you are. The creatures from beyond haunt you, their faces alien and familiar, multi-limbed and fanged and scaled and humanoid in a fantastical display so characteristic of the old, forgotten world. They speak, growl and snarl at you, and you don’t need to know their tongues to understand the language of hatred.

In their eyes, _you're_ the monster. And you are. You truly are. The monster who disturbed their rest, slaughtered their brethren, and defiled their Mother who made them and loved them. (As your Father made you and loved you.) You want to laugh, thinking about how far you tried to raise yourself, how far you then fell; an awful ugly laughter like tar, black and sticky and foul. You want to weep for all the lives you’ve violated and sacrificed on the altar of your good intentions, for yourself. Your eyes burn with a cold, brackish liquid; a cruel irony, this, to only cry when you’ve lost your tears.

Should you ever slip and shatter against the unforgiving earth, scatter all the horrors you house into the light of day, you think that you will make fine kindling for a beautiful pyre; a star that flashes across the night sky and is gone in an instant.

There was once a child on his knees, eyes squeezed shut as he prayed fervently to do good. An angel came to him when he was a man and told him to arise and rejoice for he was chosen. There was once that angel born a single vibrating note in the heavenly song as the young world stirred into life. Overcome with its beauty xe vowed to protect it by any means necessary. Two paths tangled at the last into an inextricable knot of misery and regret. How you wish the lesson of one had better taught the other. In the end, fate has no true power over creatures of free will; and once revoked, cannot be invoked again to escape the consequences of their actions.

* * *

 

Eventually you come to the edge of the sea, drawn by a song and a prayer. The lake inside you, calling to the greater water; the tug of your fraying essence as the stitches drop free one after another. You lost what was left of your shoes a million steps back and so the sand pushes up between your toes, soft and curious. Fragments of rock and innumerable tiny creatures, perennial passengers displaced from their origin by a time and distance the vastness of which swells, breaks within you like a voice in the curve of a shell.

You find her sitting cross-legged in the surf, hands dug into the wet sand and gaze fixed on the lights of distant ships, anchored for the night. She looks so peaceful you’re loath to disturb her. Instead you stand and watch the gentle motion of the sea with her. A powerful envy stirs your tatters. Twenty years ago, a thousand years ago, and the sea remains constant in a world of change and chaos. Overwhelmed you recede with the quiet waves into the hungry depths of the past. A young angel is flying in the the newly born world, the tips of trailing wings skimming the foam. A child ( _a boy, a girl_ ) swims with strong sure strokes, waving to distant figures on the shore. Somewhere in the deep a shadow stirs; a shadow in a legion of bodies with black fins and eyes and teeth, rising like an oil slick to the surface of the water, of your thoughts--

The sea roars. You blink and the multiple layers of the past flatten at once into the present. Almost gratefully you stare down the barrel of a shotgun into Claire Novak’s narrowed eyes.

"What are you _this_ time?" she demands, her teeth bared. Then, in unutterable despair, the shiver of black water under the ice: “Why do you keep coming back?”

“Claire,” you say, or try to say, the gears of your throat rusted with salt, clogged with algae-- “Claire, I’m so sorr--”

“ _Don’t you dare._ " She goes on, relentless. “You have no right. Did you even think--did you even _care?_ Parading his body around on national news, calling yourself God--as if no one would find out, no one would put a name to your smug fucking face, no one would start hounding us for interviews and miracles and shit until Mom was having nightmares and crying all the time _\--”_ She runs out of breath before she runs out of sins. “Just-- _leave us alone,_ ” she cries out.  

 _"I can’t!_ ” The words tear out of you, breaking the dam. Claire flinches, afraid and you instantly regret it. The sound of mocking laughter rings in your ears. “I can’t, I’m sorry,” you say, softer, “I made a promise.”

“To keep us safe?” Claire scoffs. “Mom and I, we’ve picked up a few things. We don’t need your help.” The last word said with a sneer.

“Your father made a promise too,” you say quietly, aching with sadness, with cruel hope.

Her face doesn’t change perceptibly, but you hear distinctly the sharp hiss of air between her teeth. “I thought I warned you not to fuck with me,” she snaps, as if her own body hasn’t already betrayed her.

“He’s here too, Claire,” you say.

Her eyes grow wide, until you can see both reflections looking back from the blue, the shadows that never really left her long after they left her behind. "What does that mean? What did you _do?"_ She shouts: "Haven't you done enough?"

And so you tell her a story:

_At the end, together in the dark, the vessel Jimmy and the angel Castiel hold on to each other tightly. It is so much better to be two than to be alone. They are dying, leftovers from the Leviathan's meal and abandoned only for the greater feast outside its prison. Now they sink into the silence and the murk, lit only by the gleam of falling feathers torn from the angel's wings in the struggle._

_As precious moments pass, the angel finally brings himself to speak. "It's time for you to let go, Jimmy."_

_"But I'm cold," the vessel says, clinging harder. "And you're warm. What happens if I let go?"_

_"A reaper will come and find you and take you to Heaven. Where you will have all the warmth and the happiness that you should have deserved, from the beginning."_

_"That's nice," the vessel says. "But it's not what I was asking. What happens to_ you?"

 _"I will disappear and be no more," the angel says. "It's no more than what_ I _deserve."_

_"Then," the vessel decides, "I'll stay with you until you're gone."_

_They fall asleep, grace and soul entwined._

And you woke up. 

"Dad," Claire whispers when you are finished, "Dad, how could you?" and you have to look away, then, to preserve the integrity of your straining seams. “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” you say, meaninglessly. So many things that weren’t supposed to happen, did.

Jimmy Novak loved Castiel, and he hated Castiel, a torrent of feeling like a river feeding into the tumultuous eternal sea. He lived in it, breathed in it like the water of his mother’s womb, until he could no longer distinguish one from the other. When freedom was finally in sight he held on out of malice, out of desperation, out of unthinking, instinctive devotion. Death came looking, could not find them, and so passed you by.

The girl, your vessel, your daughter, shakes her head slowly, almost dazed. She drops her gun carelessly into the sand, less a gesture of trust than one of resigned exhaustion. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she says blankly. “What you’re telling me...is that I’ve lost Dad for good.” Then she lifts her chin, and she _looks_ at you, properly this time. Quietly: “I’m losing him again.”

Reflexively, you want to deny it. You want to put your arms around her and tell her that there are no monsters under the bed and angels are watching over her; that the world is just and righteous, and rewards the just and righteous. But she is no longer a child. You are no longer children. You grew up, and you inherited the earth. God (will not) help you all.  

“I did so many terrible things,” you try to explain. (Castiel did so many terrible things, while Jimmy waited for the end in silent acceptance; anything, for everything to be over. You are both and neither of them, not really, but nevertheless you bear the burden of their guilt as well as their blessings.) “I can’t disappear like this, without doing anything…”

“Welcome to how most people die,” Claire shoots back, and you know she’s thinking of Jimmy, bleeding out on a dirty floor and begging to be imprisoned in her place. (So strange, to visit that scene again from both sides of the mirror. Jimmy prayed for compassion and though he did not know it then his prayer was answered; like a weed planted and watered in the perfect garden Zachariah and Naomi had tried to cut out of Castiel’s spirit with their clumsy shears.) “What makes _you_ so special?"

“I’m not special.” Your eyes shut, briefly. “Too late, but I know that now.”

Claire stays silent, unmoved. She’s right; for her Jimmy Novak ceased to meaningfully exist the moment Castiel took him away the second time. She’s right that you’re going to undo all the hard work she and Amelia have put in to move on. She’s right, though she won’t outright accuse what’s left of her father, that you’re a selfish and manipulative bastard.

Yes, the Leviathan’s out there and hungering; yes, you came back in part to keep the promises you made. But mostly, you came back to see her face, how she’s grown up (without you, _because_ of you). You would have liked to see her lovers, her children, her accomplishments. You would have given anything to see her happy and without regret.

But this is the best you will get, the best of all possible remaining worlds. Jimmy had to sacrifice himself to save the world (to save his daughter). But that doesn’t mean his family has to forgive you (either of you).

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” you say at last. “What matters is that you and your mother survive. You don’t haveto say yes, but if you wish, I can--give you a means, to protect yourselves through the coming days. I have--vestiges of Castiel’s grace still. It is a repository of spells and memories that will guide you to use those spells despite your lack of knowledge. It will serve you well when it comes time to run or to hide.”

Claire raises her brows. “No fighting?” She sounds a little disappointed.

“No fighting,” you state emphatically. “They are--” and you break off when she starts laughing, genuinely but with a wild edge.

“Sorry,” she says more soberly when she’s done. “But that...that was such a _dad_ tone.” Claire focuses her gaze on one foot scuffling in the sand. She sounds oddly delighted, and wistful. She slides that foot forward, then the other, until she’s close enough to lay one hand over your arm. Tentatively you cover it with your own, fighting the clawing need to cling and never let go. She doesn’t flinch as she stares upward into your face, searching.

“I love you, Claire,” you finally dare to say. _All of me;_ but you don’t think Claire is ready to hear that, or ever will.

She shakes her head and disengages herself, gently, with a final caress from her thumb, over the center of your palm. “Easy for you to say,” she says, with a furious wipe at her eyes. “ _I’m_ still alive.” She shakes her head, then: “I wish I could say the same,” and with that you have to be comforted.

* * *

 

Now there’s a thin strip of brightness over the horizon, marking the end of the long night. Your final night, no matter what happens. As you waited you explained what happened: the end of the Apocalypse, the war in Heaven, the harvesting of the Purgatory souls. Claire listens without comment until the end, legs stretched comfortably in front of her as though it’s just another story.

“So here we are again,” she remarks with an edge. “You coming out of nowhere to save the day, and me having no choice but to accept.”

“This time, you do have a choice.”

“Really?’ Claire heaves an ancient sigh. “I remember, you know. What it was like.”

She’s dragging one finger through the sand; aimlessly you think at first, but there’s an emerging pattern to the swoops and curves that strikes you an abrupt--and painful--blow of realization. She is drawing what you’ve lost: the angel Jimmy loved, the angel Castiel was. Now your wings are gnawed into shreds, your eyes smashed and lightless, your beauty desecrated. It occurs to you that after you are gone Claire will be the only one left who can name all your faces and the thought is both sad and liberating.

You say to her, “I’m sorry I did this to you,” because Jimmy understands, in a way that Castiel couldn’t; that the angel leaves its mark on the vessel, and thereafter the vessel that has been filled and drained again will always feel empty; like a shell left adrift on the shore, that when put to the ear sings back its memory of the sea. And Claire looks up and catches your gaze, she nods slightly, and there is little more to be said. You stand, and offer your hand to her.

“Yes,” she answers your silent question, and grips you tight as the sun rises in full.

* * *

And then there is light.

Claire cowers, fear and anger smashing her heart against her ribs-- _he lied!_ But this time she isn't battered and drowned and carried away; less the divine storm than a spring rain, light and cool. This is not Castiel trying to be gentle but Castiel diminished, and she feels a powerful, fleeting grief framed by an immense relief. For a moment the presence of the strange sad creature she had met on the beach lingers like a wet rain-smell, an impression of eyes traced in smoke and air looking down at her; then it fades and is gone, leaving an overwhelming sense of peace.

For the first time in years--since _that night_ \--she feels whole again, the aching void in her sated. Claire gingerly cracks her eyes open, rising slowly from her crouch. She is alone and all that is left of him is in her like the weight of a well-worn book, bulging with memories pressed between its fragrant leaves. It’s not just Castiel but Jimmy Novak in there; and one day she thinks she might have the courage--and forgiveness-- to go looking for him somewhere other than the grave she dug for him.

She takes one step, then another, still marveling at her newfound balance, and she takes her father home.

**_end._ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> I spent three months nitpicking at this, and that's not counting the original piece which was written in 2012 and butchered mercilessly into its current form. Hence the rushed ending since at this point I really wanted to be done and go back to my other fics. I confess it doesn't make much sense and takes generous liberties with grace/vessel rules, but then it's not like the show doesn't do it too, so there's my excuse. That is if anyone needs an excuse to write Novak fixits :)
> 
> The original title was _a threefold cord_ from Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 ("a threefold cord is not quickly broken"), but then I saw an opportunity and I took it. No apologies for that ;)


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